Charleston floods in ordinary years — king tides, training thunderstorms, the odd tropical visitor. When water gets into a kitchen, laundry room or garage, the appliance questions start immediately, and the honest answers are more nuanced than "replace everything." Here's how we actually sort flooded machines, and the safety lines we won't cross.
Rule zero: electricity first
Do not plug in, test, or "just try" any appliance that stood in water. If the outlet or panel got wet too, that's an electrician's visit before it's anyone else's. Water in a machine is a problem; energized water damage is a hazard. Photograph everything for insurance before anything moves — the meter reading of appliance depth in the water line on the cabinet matters to adjusters.
What usually survives a shallow soak
Height is destiny. A few inches of water reaches leveling feet, lower panels and — critically — whatever lives at floor level inside each machine. Dryers keep their motor and controls relatively high; a brief shallow soak often spares them after inspection and drying. Refrigerators protect their compressors reasonably well at the very bottom rear, but their insulation is the hidden victim: foam that drinks floodwater never fully dries, and a fridge that soaked for hours can become a mold reservoir inside walls you can't reach. That's the unhappy surprise on many flood calls — the machine runs, and still has to go.
What flood water reliably kills
Front-load washer electronics ride low. Dishwashers live entirely in the splash zone — their base pans hold the control wiring, and contaminated water in the sump is its own sanitation problem. Gas appliances that took water into their valves or controls are a hard stop: gas control components exposed to flooding are replaced, never dried and reused — that's not our policy, it's basic safety doctrine industry-wide. And any machine that soaked in salt-tinged tidal water ages years in a day; brackish flooding is the most corrosive thing that will ever happen to it.
The first-24-hours checklist
Power off at the breaker to affected rooms. Doors of soaked refrigerators and freezers stay closed if there's any hope of contents surviving a short outage — and get propped open for drying the moment contents are lost. Pull machines away from walls so air moves behind them. Run nothing until each unit has had a proper inspection: an hour of diagnosis is cheaper than a fire, a leak, or a mold bloom in a wall cavity.
The honest economics
Insurance often decides this story, and our written flood assessments exist partly for that paperwork. Where the choice is genuinely yours: shallow-and-brief favors inspection and repair; deep, long, or brackish favors replacement, almost regardless of the machine's age. We'll tell you which side of that line each appliance landed on — per machine, in writing, with no drama either way.